Andy Murray became the first of the world’s foremost tennis players to say that he would be prepared to take a reduction in prize money to help finance a state-of-the-art anti-doping programme that will determine if his sport is free of drugs.

The Olympic gold medal-winner and US Open champion was speaking yesterday at Queen’s Club, West London, having stepped on to the main grass court for the AEGON Championships that looked, in the first week of February, in good enough condition to host the World Bowls Championships. The desire to look forward four months to the grass-court season was tempered by the need to confront a more sinister foe as quickly as possible.

Nothing concerns Murray more than the taint of suspicion that hangs over his sport in the days since Lance Armstrong’s confessional on American TV laid bare the degree to which cycling had little or no answer to the doping that infested its every corner.

“There is little more I can do to work any harder to try to be the best tennis player I can be,” the British No 1 said. “The day after a five-hour match, I hurt, I really hurt. I’m stiff and I’m sore. I know what an effort it takes and equally I know what goes into my body.”

Murray was responding in the light of the article in the The Times ten days ago suggesting he and his fellow leading players, - Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal - should take a decisive lead and demand greater action. It argued that the four needed “to tell the ITF it is its duty to put in place the finest system money can buy and do the tests that will catch offenders. The anti-doping budget last year was $1.8 million (about £1.15 million) and yet there was a $300,000 under-spend. How can that happen? That would pay for 500 decent blood- doping tests and then the sport would really know where it stood.”

The need for action has been exacerbated by the potentially catastrophic fallout from Operación Puerto in Spain, where the offices of Eufemiano Fuentes, a former cycling team doctor, have been raided and copious amounts of blood-doping material have been found. There is a suspicion that Dr Fuentes was supplying tennis players as well as cyclists, for he claims to have offered his services to athletes from many sports. His criminal trial has just opened in Madrid. Murray, who once felt that the tennis anti-doping programme was too intrusive, has come to the belief that there has to be a greater urgency in tennis’s response.

“Maybe it’s down to our governing bodies, the ATP, to invest some of our own money into Wada (the World Anti-Doping Agency) and into making sure we get more testing done,” he said. “That’s the only way you can improve your testing procedures — by having more of them, more blood testing.

“In the long term I think you would save a lot of money because more people would come to watch sports rather than reading all the time about doping or match-fixing scandals. Every single week right now there’s something different. It’s bad for sport.“I don’t know exactly who puts what into the drug-testing. This is where we have the problem with the ATP and the ITF.“The players have been complaining about the prize money in the grand slams [where recent rises have been significant] and whoever is putting that money in, if it means taking some of the money off the players’ earnings, that’s what we have to do.“A lot has been learnt from the Lance Armstrong situation. You don’t want that happening ever again. I don’t want that happening for my sport. That would be terrible.

“Personally, I wouldn’t say I’ve been tested less. I would just say there needs to be more blood testing. Last year I got tested a lot, especially from the French Open right through to the Olympics.”Murray heads to the United States next week to resume his training regime ahead of the first two Masters 1000 events this year: the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, and the Sony Open in Miami.

He will spend ten days preparing with Ivan Lendl, his coach. “Providing you do everything you can to make sure you’re in the best shape possible, you get to the tournaments early and you’ve prepared well, then you can go away happy or satisfied with however you do,” he said.

“So long as you give yourself the best opportunity to win or go deep into the tournaments, that’s all you can do.”

Somehow, Wimbledon and February don’t quite go together. Like Ross Hutchins and cancer. Yet here we are, seated upstairs at the All England Club, a stiff breeze blowing across the lawns and a chillier one ransacking your mind as you try to make sense of the story he tells as matter-of-factly as if we were discussing the unfolding of an Andy Murray rally.

The special bond between Murray and Hutchins was further enriched as they dined together in Wimbledon Village last night, a week after the Australian Open finalist landed from Melbourne and spent that same evening in the company of his best friend, along with their contemporaries, Colin Fleming, Jonny Marray and Jamie Baker. At some time yesterday, hair will have come up in the conversation because they have long ribbed each other about their respective, ever-so-slight hair loss.

“I think Andy’s going to win the contest in a few months’ time,” Hutchins says, preparing for what will happen as his chemotherapy course intensifies.

It was two days after Christmas when the 27-year-old, who has played seven Davis Cup ties for his country, was forced to confront a very different 2013 than he had planned for. Months of back pain, dismissed initially as wear and tear on a young athlete, had grown excruciating, and he was sent home from a camp in La Manga, Spain, having been talked through what may be happening to him.

Hodgkin’s lymphoma was diagnosed and the prognosis was upbeat, which is the way he intends to stay.

“I’m realistic,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going on inside me. I don’t know if the drugs are working. I know that what I’m taking and my type of cancer are supposed to attack each other very quickly. It’s effective, normally with only one winner, the chemo. The thing that fills me with confidence is that I had this continual terrible back pain leading up to my first chemo session and I haven’t felt it since. Who knows if it is putting it on hold? I’m reassured something is happening to my benefit.

“I think of this cancer in tennis terms, like being on a bad run, which is a strange thing to say, I know. We’ve all lost a load of first rounds, I lost 11 in a row once; a tough time. If you try and hide something and push it away, you end up thinking about it more and worrying about it more.“You try to lie and start kidding yourself but I am open about it — there is a very high cure rate and yes, I have a brilliant team. I go down that route. I’m feeling good and feeling positive.

“There was a time over Christmas where I got a lot of bad news: ‘You have pneumonia in your lungs.’ OK. ‘You have cancer and it’s in the bone and it’s spread down in the spleen.’ And every time you want to speak to your doctor you’re expecting something bad.

“But the treatment is superb and it doesn’t matter how far it has spread, the chemo hits everything, it just means that rather than a three-month bout of chemo for the chest, it’s a longer process. The cure-rate is the same.

“It just means three months more, or tougher drugs, or a more intense programme, but as sportsmen we’ve gone through a lot of body and mental pain and maybe we can handle it better. I tend to persuade myself of that. Maybe it’s bluffing, but . . .”

I find myself marvelling at the man’s honesty, although I have known him since he was 13 and never doubted it for a moment. That was about the time he was developing a kinship with Murray, one that manifested itself when they played doubles.

“He was 16, and the older players like [David] Sherwood and [Andrew] Banks were desperate to beat him to show he wasn’t that good,” Hutchins says. “But he was superb. We lost a match and he was so angry. No time did he blame me but I’ve never seen a greater drive or passion or hatred to lose than the guy next to me on the court. I felt I was competitive, but he was unbelievable. I knew he would be a champion.”

Hutchins admitted he bawled the night Murray won the US Open last September; the same way in which Murray has responded to his friend’s plight in his private moments.He got engaged to his long-time sweetheart Lindsay Wood last week. “I think of this cancer as an evil thing that is trying to knock me off the path and I am going to battle it and stay on the path,” he says.No wonder Murray, and all of us, hold him in such high regard.

• Great Britain open their 2013 Fed Cup campaign in Eilat, Israel, today with a Europe-Africa Zone group one fixture against Bosnia-Herzegovina in pool B, before matches with Portugal and Hungary. Judy Murray will captain Laura Robson, Elena Baltacha, Johanna Konta, Anne Keothavong and Heather Watson.

Oh,Craig,thank you so much-I've heard a lot about the Ross Hutchins interview,but because I'm not a Times subscriber I couldn't find anywhere to read it.

Must admit,I'm a bit teary afterwards What a lovely,lovely man he is-and how brave too.Please god he makes a full recovery,and enjoys a very happy,long life.And congratulations to him on his engagement!I hadn't heard about that.How wonderful to have that to celebrate,amidst what must be a very tough time for Ross and his loved ones. Here's hoping that come summer,Ross will be going into remission and be cheering his friend on in the Wimbledon final again

Andy Murray returns to the practice court in Miami next week but before heading off, the US Open champion told Danny Griffiths why he will miss Great Britain’s Davis Cup tie in April to concentrate on his bid for the French Open, and how tennis needs to step up its fight against drug cheatsHow realistic are your chances of winning the French Open? Clay is not your favourite surface.I have reluctantly opted not to play the Davis Cup because I need to get in perfect shape to play on clay. I don’t feel comfortable on that surface until four to five weeks into the season, where I can arrive from Paris and feel comfortable after the second or third match on grass. My preparation must be spot on.After the Lance Armstrong scandal and the Operacion Puerto case in Spain, where a doctor admitted giving athletes banned substances and claimed he worked with tennis players, does your sport need tighter doping controls?It’s essential for tennis that the names and whoever was involved within it comes out. Not just tennis, all sports just now need to look very closely at this stuff. A lot’s been learned from what happened with the Lance Armstrong situation. You don’t want that happening ever again. I don’t want that happening for my sport, because it would be terrible. I’ve been asked a lot if tennis is clean or not. I don’t know any more how you judge. If one in 100 players is doping, then, in my eyes, that isn’t a clean sport. We need to do everything we can to ensure everyone is clean. I think that comes with biological passports and more blood testing. I know the training that I do, I know what goes in and out of my body. I know from my side that I’m clean, that’s all I can comment on. I’d hope that’s the same for the rest of tennis players.How has your coach Ivan Lendl helped to improve your game?Mentally he has helped because he went through a lot of the same things I have. Ivan has also made a few technical changes and I have spent more time on the practice court than I have with previous coaches. I used to spend more time in the gym than on the tennis court. It is more balanced now.You are 25 and have said you want to play for another six or seven years. How realistic is that?I would love to play for as long as I can and I just hope that I won’t be hit by too many injuries. If I can stay healthy, I believe it is possible to stick around for a long time. Roger [Federer] is a great example of what you can achieve if you stay in shape.How do you relax?I love watching the NBA and playing fantasy sports with my friends on the tour. I also enjoy go-karting and watching just about any sport.Away from tennis, what do you wish you could improve on?I am not good at cooking and my dancing and singing are bad.Who inspires you away from tennis?I love boxing and have followed it heavily since I was 12 and so Muhammad Ali is a big inspiration. Sir Alex Ferguson is incredible, he is the perfect example of someone who has achieved longevity thanks to his drive, passion and motivation to win. I find it really impressive and interesting the way he keeps reinventing his team. It is a concept I find fascinating.You are returning to Queen’s in June for the Aegon Championships – how important is that to you?I’ll never forget winning my first ATP match at Queen’s almost eight years ago. The courts are as good as anywhere in the world. I’ve won the title twice. I’d love to win it again.#Andy Murray

I don't think anyone could read the interview with Ross Hutchins and not be moved. He has always come across as being a lovely young man, and his courage in the face of what he is dealing with is inspiring. Huge congratulations to him and Lindsay on their engagement, that is wonderful news. All the very best to Ross and his loved ones.

Craig, I know the interview with Ross is from today's Times, but could you let us know where the first article is from please? It's an interesting article, but I find them more interesting when I know who is doing the writing, thanks.